We're going to read the entire psalm. Hear now God's word. Praise the Lord all nations, extol Him all peoples, for great is His steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. God's holy word, may He bless it to all our hearts. Let's pray. Our Father, do be with us now as we come to think about this Fill us with your praise, now and ever, in Jesus' name, amen. Short but sweet. Dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, variations on this sentiment have been expressed time and again with reference to Psalm 117, the shortest psalm in the Psalter or chapter in the Bible, if you will, only a psalm away from the longest, Psalm 119. and it's 176 verses, so short that some have sought to attach it to what precedes Psalm 116 or what follows Psalm 118 as if it could not properly stand alone, though it begins and ends with a call to praise. While perhaps used as we do the doxology, some scholars of temple worship have thought that this may have been used doxologically. We sing, praise God from whom all blessings flow. And they might have sung this in something of a like fashion. we know and can see that this is complete unto itself and contains a world in its brief scope. Expansiveness is often necessary and helpful in many respects. I've said that many times. Expansiveness. But so is brevity. I say it, I admit it, short in expression, yet with a theme and application as wide as all of creation. This is Psalm 117, near the center of all the word and calling on the whole world to engage in the central, think about this, in the central occupation of eternity. Praise the Lord. The praise of our God is what will occupy us for our time in the new heavens and new earth. The theme then of this psalm is evident. God, by the psalmist, commands universal praise. He commands universal praise. And we see this theme developed in these two points. First, the call to praise, which really we see in verse 1. And then the cause for praise. which we see in verse 2. The call to praise and the cause for praise. Well, the call to praise sounds in verse 1. Praise the Lord, all nations, all you Gentiles. You could translate that. The word there is goyim, Gentiles, nations. extol him, some versions say laud him or other sorts of parallels to praise, extol him all you people groups, all peoples, all ethnicities, sort of like what we think about in the New Testament where the gospel is to be taken to all the people groups, ta ethne, usually translated the nations, but to every group of people throughout the world. So what we have here is a call to praise that is universal. So let's note two things about that. Let's note the scope of this call, of this universal call, and the purpose of this divine call. First of all then, we say that the scope of the call to praise I've already said it's universal, it's obvious here, is to all Gentiles, to the nations, the goyim, not just to the Jews. Now, again, you hear me say this and you're thinking as Christians, New Testament Christians, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know that. Well, let me encourage you, and I hope you're reading through the Bible perhaps again in the new year, as you read the Bible, do so with fresh eyes. Do so, and you read a passage like this, and think to yourself, this is right in the smack dab middle of a psalter. And most Jews had no interest. In fact, they were opposed to the notion that God would bring the gospel to the nations. What do they need that for, they would say. So read this that way. Let me just say this. If you're reading the Bible, if you've maybe perhaps begun again or you should be reading through the Bible in some fashion, you should have some plan. Maybe your pastor has given you such. Maybe you're doing such. Don't read the Bible this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very easy to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this. I know this. I know this. I know that. You might as well not bother. Read it with interest, with engagement, with freshness, and think about where you are in terms of redemptive history, and what would God's people have known and seen then, and the amazing word that this then is. So it's not just to the Jews. We often rightly recognize that in the Old Testament before Pentecost, God's gracious salvation came largely, it did, it came largely to ethnic Israel. That was its focus. Though there were, as I sometimes call them, previews of coming attractions in something like the faith of Rahab. She wasn't a Jew. Right? And we think about this when we look at the genealogy of Jesus. We see some non-Jews in there. The call of Ruth, the repentance of Nineveh under Jonah's preaching. We see something of the gospel going beyond those bounds. This verse highlights Verse 1 of Psalm 117 highlights a very direct Old Testament reference to the glorious reality that God's eternal purpose, His eternal purpose was not simply to bless the Jews, but through them and through the Messiah, the Christ of God, who would come from them to bless the world. It's glorious to think about this and to read this. And Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, cites this, and we thought about this a little bit when we looked at Romans 15 last time I was here in the evening. And I'll just turn you over there for a moment, Romans 15, you can turn or not turn. And if you begin in verse 8, you'll see where Paul is picking up various Old Testament passages that speak of the reality of the gospel going to the nations, of the universalizing of the message of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. And you'll notice in verse 11, He's quoting, he says, it's written back in verse 9, and he says, again, verse 10, and again, verse 11, and verse 11 quotes our text. Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him. So Paul distinctly, as I say, as the apostle to the Gentiles, picks up this text and says, that's now what's happening. That's now what's happening. That's a good instance of the church of what's happening now. you will not know that reference. It's a Flip Wilson reference from the 1970s. A few of you may know the reference. But he used to talk about the church of what's happening now as a critique of the madness of the church in his day. But here's a good use. The church of what's happening now. What's happening now is the gospel is going global. Thanks be to God. And you say, well, why do you make such a big deal? I mean, we forget none of us would be here. None of us would be here. I don't know, are there any ethnic Jews out there? I don't think so. I think I know all of you. Most people in the church are of the nations. Well, this was missed not only by the Jews of the Old Testament, though it's right here. I mean, it's right here in Psalm 117. And the Psalter is something that was sung in temple worship. And then it became sung in synagogue worship even more. It wasn't sung as much by the people in temple worship, it was sung chiefly by the priests. But it becomes, where this becomes popularized, where the Psalter becomes popular is in synagogue worship. And then that's taken over by the worship of the early church. But this is even true in the New. Think of Peter. Peter's just, you know, we love to pick on Peter, but he's a great example. Remember, he falls into the trance, and he's hungry, and he has this vision, and the Lord says, take and kill and eat, and among these are unclean animals. And he's like, whoa, Lord, no, no, no, I've never eaten unclean. It's not really good to tell God no when he says, do this. But that's Peter. And he says, don't call anything common, are unclean, that I call clean, and he sends them to preach to Cornelius. In other words, the gospel is now going to the Gentiles. It's Peter that takes it first, not Paul, Peter. And what happens after, though? You remember from Galatians, He's there happily eating with Paul and the Gentile guys, and here come some Jews who are the types who say, well, we should observe the food laws, and Jewish Christians shouldn't be mingling with these Gentiles because they'll defile themselves. And Peter is like, hmm. He's like, I wasn't hanging out with them. You're confused. I was waiting for you guys to come. You're my people. And Paul basically says, knock it off, Peter. Stop it. We're one, what I just read you from Ephesians. We're one. Now Paul got that, but even Peter, the Pope, didn't get it. That highlights for us that our problem is not the truth or our proclamation of it. Rather, our problem is that we, because we can say the truth. We can proclaim it. We fail to believe it and live out the truth often. We've got the good answers, we know, and you can even think about what Dr. Menger was saying in prayer. We know God is sovereign. We know that. We're reformed people. But we need to live out the reality of that practically. I certainly saw that in my wife. Very practical Calvinism lived out. Well, It takes time. It takes time in our lives. It takes time in history, all outworked by the Holy Spirit. The scope of this, as we're saying now, is all nations and all the people groups they're in. That's the scope of the call to praise. Spurgeon puts it this way. He says, we know and believe that no one tribe of men shall be unrepresented in the universal song which shall ascend unto the Lord of all. Individuals have already been gathered out of every kindred and people and tongue by the preaching of the gospel. This is in the 19th century. And these have rightheartedly joined in magnifying the grace which sought them out and brought them to know the Savior. These are but the advance guard of a number which no man can number, who will come ere long to worship the all-glorious One." This is being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit. This work that Spurgeon refers to of more and more coming to praise the Lord, is being worked out by the Holy Spirit as the church goes forward. Let us dedicate our time, treasure, and talents to this highest of tasks, crying to the Lord in wrath to remember mercy and to revive us until the completing of this sacred task. This is the labor. This is the work. this call, this universal call to praise the Lord. This is what we should be doing. Let's not be distracted from it by lesser things. Seek first His kingdom and its righteousness, and everything else needed is consequential. It's a good time to remind ourselves of this. I've been doing it for a while now. It seems to be a signal part of my calling to remind people that politics not to overwhelm us in the church so that our agenda looks very much like the world's. No, if we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, a good approach to politics is consequential to that. Right behavior and following Him is consequential to that. But we need to focus on that kingdom and that righteousness to walk and to follow Him. The call to praise arises. We've been talking about the scope of it, the universal scope of it. It arises from a particular purpose. First of all, that all should praise God is His due. So we've seen that the whole world should praise God. Why, you might ask? Well, it's His due. He deserves it. And again, we could stop and have a little seminar here on God. And if you haven't done that in your own life, I would encourage you to do it. Packer's book, Knowing God, still remains a great place to focus on this. There are other good books. Ferguson has some good books in this area that are meant for all. not just the theologians, the seminarians, but are meant really for all in our churches to be able to focus on God. And when you focus on God, on his greatness, on all the attributes and properties that mark him as great, we often refer to those as incommunicable, that show Him in His uniqueness, and then those that are commutable that show Him and that we have a share in and a measure, but that's His goodness, His holiness, His justice, His truth. Those things, when you make a study of that, you will see that He is due all praise and honor and glory. As the psalmist declares, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Even the inanimate creation. I didn't know Psalm 19 was going to be our special song, but Psalm 19 speaks of the inanimate creation witnessing to him. The heavens declaring, the firmament showing forth his handiwork. Why is there this universal declaration? Because we say, He is worthy. So we should, in all that we do, whether, this is Paul, he says, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should seek to glorify Him. We should seek to praise the Lord. Thus we praise Him with our lips and our lives. This is a call to love Him and one another. How do we praise Him with our lives? I just said it. Loving Him with all our being and loving each other. You say, but we fall short of that. Yes, we do. We always fall short of it. But this is always our prayer. And we pray at the same time that we would die to sin that we live more and more to righteousness. We ought to die more and more to sin. But you don't just say, well, I'm just going to focus, you know, I got to focus on dying to sin. I'll worry about the positive. People do that sort of thing. They don't think of it that way. But you do both at the same time. You're not like, well, I'll really handle issues in my life when I get this stuff that I'm dealing with over here under control. No, you're supposed to be dealing with it all. You say, well, I can't do that. Yes, you can. You have the strength, as we said in prayer. You do it by looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith. I mean, those two things go together, dying to sin and living to righteousness. You do them at the same time. And so we praise him with our lips and our lives. So we praise him, we say, first of all, in terms of purpose, because it's fitting, as Leslie Allen put it, the primary rationale of the summons here in verse one is not contemporary missionary intent, nor eschatological hope of conversion, but the preliminary truth, the more basic presuppositional truth that Yahweh deserves the praise of the whole world. No matter what, God is worthy of all praise. And that's true in your life. The hymns say that all over the place. Be still my soul, it is well with my soul. I think you know the circumstances of it is well with my soul. Spafford had lost his family. and bestow my soul as that word of ministry to whatever's going on, I'm to be doing this. And again, so let me put what I said here. You don't say, well, I've got all this stuff I have to deal with. When I get all this, when my finances get better, when my health gets better, when I get over my grief, when I get over this broken relationship, when I get over this, that, or the other, then I'll praise the Lord. No, you praise Him in the pit, you've heard the pastor, the former pastor. I mean to say, preach on that. You praise him out of the pit. You see, this life is never going to be what it ought to be, if we can put it in those terms. We're not gonna fulfill God's revealed will. perfectly in this life. We'll always fall short of His glory. Well, what do we do? Calvin says, we don't wait till our motives are pure to act. If we wait till our motives are pure to act, we'll never act because they're never going to be pure. There's always an admixture of sin. But we do this with praise. Okay, yeah, Pastor, I'm just going through too much right now, I just gotta deal with that, and then we'll think about praising the Lord. No, start praising the Lord right where you are. That will minister to others, other Christians, that will be a witness to non-Christians, and it will minister to your soul. Start blessing the Lord and praising Him because He deserves it. Because he does deserve it, this should and does. Now, we said, I quoted Leslie Allen, who said about our missionary efforts and our eschatological hope, but because he does deserve it, this should fuel our missionary efforts to enlist others to join us. Now, I have in here in my notes, and this was, I wrote the sermon a few years back. I have, and I was thinking about this as a kind of first of the year sermon. This was preached early like that. And I said, think about telling 20 people this year, sharing with them the praise of the Lord. Now, and I was just, you know, I was thinking for some people, maybe you're just like, oh, I'm telling 50, 100. That's good. I don't really think most people are in our circles. So you say, well, 20 is... Tell somebody, start somewhere. You've heard me on this before. You're not going to get away on this one. You've heard my admonitions to pray. You've heard this. And I'll have people say, I'm just in such a state that I can't pray. And I'll say, pray to pray. I don't think I can even pray to pray. I've literally had people say this. And I just sit there, I'm thinking, this is easy, and I can keep doing this all day. Pray to pray to pray. You've got to start somewhere. And you say, well, does the Lord, that's no good for, It's very, the Lord loves you and will accept that. It's like your child's scrawl, that you're like, oh sweetheart, that's such a nice picture, and you put it on the refrigerator. Why is it a nice picture? Because it comes from one you love, it's a product of love, it's all about love. And that's what the confession says, quoting scripture, putting together a lot of things about our good works. Though they are very open themselves to judgment, and they do not give us the kind of standing before God that only Christ's work does, because we trust in Him, they're accepted by our God, just like we accept our kids' drawings. They're acceptable in His sight. So, in all of your weakness, start to serve. God will not despise your serving. you're thinking about him like you are. I mean, we are. We can tear each other to shreds. We can be hypercritical of each other. And because we know so much more, or we think we do, about what's going on in the world, people not very long ago didn't have access to, I don't know whether it's that we really know that much more about what's actually going on in the world, or we just think we do. I'm not, it's hard to tell. It's really hard to tell. But there's a lot of people that think they know a lot of things that they never used to because all you have to do is, I'm now an expert. They don't really say that, but it's sort of, you know. It's like I was at a doc once, and my gastroenterologist, and I said, what, do you ever, you know, people come in, they've been on the web, he said, oh yeah, he showed me a cartoon that he had over there, I was missing it. And a fellow comes in and he says, I've asked Yahoo, and I want a second opinion. He's coming to the doctor and calling the doctor the second opinion, and the doctor says, ask Google or something. In other words, the doctor is like, I'm not the second opinion to Yahoo. Ask another. Well, it also does point to the eschatological hope that a myriad will join us in the praise of our Lord more than we could ever hope and that will never exhaust his praise if each of us had a thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer's praise. That's why, I mean, this is in the hymns, oh, for a thousand tongues. Why? You want to praise the Lord. You want to multiply it by a thousand. And thousands upon thousands, ten thousands upon ten thousands. That's what we see in Revelation. Let's be about it. Praise the Lord, all nations. Extol Him, all peoples. So that's the call to praise. But let's consider now in verse 2, the cause for praise. The cause for praise. Well, we read it here in the ESV. Great is a steadfast love toward us. I have no problem with that phrase. That's the word there that's translated steadfast love is chesed. I very much aspirated that. I'm trying to be, you know, a good Hebrew here. Chesed, you may know that word. Steadfast love is a good translation. Covenant love, covenant faithfulness. But the second part, I would prefer some other translations. The faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. The root word there is the emet word, which is the word for true or truth. And the New King James translates that, the truth of the Lord endures forever. I think that's a better translation. So I like, I'm fine with great is his steadfast love or his merciful kindness is great, and the truth of the Lord endures forever. So let's think about those two things, steadfast love and truth. Praise God for his steadfast love, his merciful kindness, his chesed. His unfailing covenant love toward us. One commentator rightly notes that this could be translated. Notice it says here, great, great. The word there has to do with exalted, lifted up. Great is His steadfast love towards us. And one commentator says, and I like this, you could translate this, His never-failing covenant love towers over us. His never-failing covenant love towers over us. It overshadows our sin. You need to know this in all your struggles. His never failing love is greater than your always disheartening lack of love. You always lack in love towards Him and each other. The more you desire to love and to worship Him, the more aware you are of this. But in your sense, what should overshadow, and as you leave here and as you go through this cold week, may have a warm heart, that His love towers over you. This hesed is seen perfectly, particularly in his justifying the ungodly. You want to know what this never-failing love is? He justifies the ungodly. He adopts, as sons and daughters, rebels. He sanctifies and preserves those who so often fail. Truly only those thus redeemed can and will praise Him. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. We ought to be praising Him. I mean, he talks about raising up stones and rocks to praise Him if we don't, but we're the redeemed of the Lord. Let's praise the Lord. Now again, you know, back to the 20 and all this, I mean within the context, I'm not asking anybody, God is not asking anybody, because he made you as he did. He's not asking you to become a fundamentally different person in terms of the structure of your personality, to have a different temperament. He's not saying if you're of a quiet spirit, you have to become voluble. He's not saying that. You're saying, well, how do I, as a quiet person, really praise the Lord? You've got to figure that out. That's your work. I can't answer all these questions for you. You've got to figure out how do I praise the Lord throughout the whole course of my life. That's your work. I mean, a lot of times, well, I'm bored. I used to tell my children, they would go, I'm bored. Well, there's plenty. You lack in holiness. There's right there. You should be working on dying to sin, living to righteousness. But seriously, I mean, don't ask the preacher to do everything for you. You're really gonna, because, you know, this praise looks one way in me, and I'm telling you, you know, and this is to your, I mean, you don't need more strangers than you have. I'll do. But we need you. We need the Steves and the Cowles and everybody to be praising the Lord in your life. And you have to figure that out. You have to figure it out. I mean, a lot of times our backwardness about this, our reticence, is not just because of our personality. It's just because we don't do it. We don't want to. We're ashamed. We're embarrassed. We need to get over ourselves and praise the Lord. And we do it, first of all, with our lives. We live in a way. And remember, you've heard me say a lot of times when somebody says, wow, You seem like such an honest person. You seem like such a kind person. You don't want to just say, thank you, thank you very much. That's a way of them asking a reason for the hope that is in you. They don't, they're not putting it that way, but that's what they're, they're like, why are you different? We're different because we're the redeemed of the Lord and we need to say so. We praise the Lord. We praise him with our lips. We praise him with our lives. And you have to figure out how you do that wherever you are. He has never, Ephesians 1 says, not loved us. His love is based on his good pleasure. It's not based on faith foreseen or works foreseen, you know that. And it's a love, as the hymn writers say, that will never let us go. He will never, no never, no, this is Chesed. He will never, no never, no never forsake. Even though we're most slow to learn and rebel often, we need patience with each other like he has with us. We need patience with each other, away with perfectionism. This is the picture of Chesed, steadfast love. This is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that the truth of the Lord endures forever. So we're talking about covenant faithfulness, love, Chesed, and now Emmet. The truth of the Lord endures forever. The truth is that God is holy, unalterably so, and that we as fallen are sinful. Just given these facts of our sinfulness, God's holiness, truth doesn't appear to be something to which we should appeal or that we could celebrate. No guilty criminal, in other words, wants the truth. So do we like truth? Yes. We praise the Lord that His truth endures forever because He does not save us by denying His truth. A lot of people sort of act like that, particularly these days, like God just says, You're forgiven out of the thin air. No, we're forgiven only because Jesus paid it all. That's it. That's why we're forgiven. We praise the Lord that his truth endures forever because he doesn't save us by denying his truth, but by fulfilling it in the person and work of Christ. Because God both loves us and is committed to truth. I mean, he couldn't be not committed to truth. God is truth. If he were to deny truth, he would deny himself. This means that all blessings come to us at a great price because God is committed to truth. Christ must die, and so must we. Both are good, but costly. Never forget this. This is not some generic sort of, well, God just loves us and forgives us. It's all tied to Jesus. We can sing this from Psalm 117 and we can call for universal praise only because of Jesus. He's the real cause of all our praise. He's the cause of all our praise. It is in Jesus' person and work alone that Chesed steadfast law of covenant faithfulness, and emet, truth, or mercy, we could call it, and truth are brought together. He is the truth who alone, he is the truth, the way, the truth, and the life, who alone paves the way, and it's a new and living way, Hebrews tells us, to life by his active and passive obedience. Psalm 85.10, you were no doubt thinking of this, says mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed. These seem to be opposite sorts of things. Righteousness and truth, again, is that our friend? Yes, because Jesus fulfills all righteousness. He who is the truth. And he gives us his righteousness, having taken our sin. Our sin is imputed or accounted to him, the sin of God's people, and he imputes his righteousness to us. What a description of the person of our Lord, the Word become flesh, full of grace and truth, whose doing and dying brings mercy and truth, righteousness and peace together. And this, of course, is why Hebrews is at such pain to describe him as our great High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek means King of Righteousness, Melchizedek. King of Righteousness, that's what it is in the Hebrew, Melchizedek. And he was also, remember, and you remember this from the old King James, it says he was, Melchizedek was King of Righteousness and King of Salem? That is not talking about the cigarette. It's talking about Shalom. King of righteousness, King of peace. He brings them together. Thanks be to God. This is how you and I, sinners, can approach a holy God, because Jesus provided the way through his doing and dying. And we're accepted because of that, and only that. This is the calling and message of the church, and this is the cause for praise. This is why we should be praising and calling the whole world to praise, because here is hope. We were talking about hope last time. Here's hope, and here's the only hope. Jesus has come and done for us what we could never do for ourselves. He's brought us sinners back to God. And it's this, Psalm 117, that we are to be living out, patiently looking to Him, and declaring to the world. This is the calling and message of the church. We need to be living out praise to Him for His grace and truth. We're not about self-help or how to better yourself or be successful. No, those sorts of false things always are around. Rather, what we're about is the simple truth that with lips and lives, we're to be about calling all, including ourselves, to be on the right side of history. It seems that those who call themselves progressives, they always talk about the right side of history. Well, I'm going to tell you what the right side of history is. Being with God, that's the right side of history. That's the right side of history. And it may not look that way at any given point. The world is not going to agree with that. We're often going to be, we're going to be on the wrong side as far as worldlings are concerned. But we're not. We're not. We're to be on the right side giving due praise to our Lord for who he is and what he has done for us in Christ. This is what should set the plate for us in the coming year and always. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for this beautiful word. Take it home to all of our hearts in Jesus' name. Amen.